It was a little after eleven on April 10, 2013, when Jim walked into the Musée d’Orsay. He was in Paris on his honeymoon. His wife Maggie was back in their room at the Ritz. She had spent two years in Paris, one as an undergraduate art history major and one for her MFA. They were touring together but she was leaving museums to her engineer husband. Also, there was her morning sickness. She hoped to hide it until she returned to the States and solve the issue before her mother or mother-in-law, both mothers of four, noticed. Jim wasn’t the reason. It was something that happened on her bachelorette jaunt to Bimini.
Jim saw straight away when he entered the museum how ill-suited it had been as a train station. The building was tall, but neither wide, (six tracks at best), nor long. It didn’t surprise him to learn it had not been originally designed as a train station but had been converted from an exhibition hall in the late 1800s, had only lasted forty years as a train station, and once again, was an exhibition hall, a much more glorious one to judge from the pictures in the vestibule.
He headed for the area where the Cézanne paintings were exhibited, Maggie’s idea. She thought he would like them. He was taken immediately by “The Bridge at Maincy.” Geometric shapes formed by tree trunks, branches, and a bridge stood out from the formless background of the foliage and water. A wooden footbridge linking two stone arches ran across the center of the picture. Maggie told him to look at how Cézanne’s slanting squarish and oblong brush strokes held the painting together and gave it an impression of strength. She said he could see the same in Cézanne’s more famous “The Card Players,” though the artist used more shading in that one.
The bridge Cézanne painted was built in 1822 by Colonel Thomson over the River Almont to access his home, Chateau de Condray. It is clear from the painting, the bridge is sheltered beneath a stand of pines. Dropped branches fall to the bottom of the river where decaying and decayed needles and bark create darkness. Over the years the water became black and turned into a repository of missing pets, stolen jewelry minus their stones, and bodies. In 1890, the most significant discovery was M. Gorier. At the time of his death, he was the wealthiest man in the village. Because, or despite this, the circumstances of his death were not widely investigated. That nearly everyone in the village, including the gendarmes, owed him money was not considered a relevant circumstance. The official explanation was that he was fishing, had slipped on the rain-soaked bank and hit his head on a rock.
In the early summer of 1904, the body of the young schoolteacher was discovered. The tattered state of her clothing may have been due to the time she was in the water. The coroner estimated it to be a month. After her first-year teaching at the village école she told her landlady that she planned to spend a month with her mother in Honfleur. It was only after a letter from her mother reached her landlady that people became concerned.
Cécile Anjou was beloved by the village. Parents saw their children almost eager to go to school, then spend an hour doing their homework in the evening. She was vivacious, attractive and charming without threatening village wives. Cécile was small boned with dark sharp features that might have degenerated into a witch-like countenance but only enhanced laughing blue Norman eyes and masses of black curls.
At the mass commemorating her life the curé talked about how she had inspired the children and contributed to the well-being of the village, especially the new art center.
“Cécile Anjou was a humble servant of God, never vaunting her accomplishments, always giving credit to others.”
“We may never know how she met her end, but we know she is in our Lord’s hands.”
With Cécile’s body they found her laden suitcase. And rocks in the pockets of her dress. There were no signs of violence. The coroner and gendarmerie were more certain about the cause of Cécile’s demise and kept their knowledge close. The ostensible thoroughness of their investigation did credit to the curé’s words and Cécile’s reputation.
The village collected funds for the headmistress to accompany Cécile’s coffin to her parents in Honfleur. The train traveled to Gare d’Orsay. From there, the headmistress hired a cart to carry the coffin across Pont Alexandre III to Gare Saint Lazare on to its destination in Honfleur.
Paris, Great Cities, Vol. 1, Pure Slush